


Towards the Future

by sparxwrites



Category: Geek and Sundry, Sagas of Sundry, Sagas of Sundry: Dread
Genre: 'Jokey' Suicide Mention, Canon Compliant, Emotions, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, High School, Humor, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” Raina asked, curiously, drifting starfish-like on her back over the dark, glassy surface of her parents’ pool. “Like, when you leave high school, I mean. We’ve only got a year left, so…”(In which Raina hosts an illicit pool gathering, the five friends get up to all the usual things teenagers aren't supposed to, and the future is discussed vaguely but at length.)





	Towards the Future

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” Raina asked, curiously, drifting starfish-like on her back over the dark, glassy surface of her parents’ pool. “Like, when you leave high school, I mean. We’ve only got a year left, so…”

It was October, the schools long since back after the lazy summer holidays – but with the weather hovering in the high seventies, it was still plenty warm for a pool party. Or, rather, a mildly-illicit pool _gathering_ , since Raina’s parents had expressly forbidden any parties when they’d left for a long weekend in the city. Not particularly averse to breaking rules when it suited her – an inevitable consequence of being friends with Kayden and Sat for any length of time – Raina had decided to stick to the _letter_ of the law, rather than the spirit. Five people were hardly a party, she reasoned, and what her parents didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

Which was how she’d ended up with five people in her pool, and enough booze for ten stacked over various pieces of garden furniture, having a definitely-not-party in the dying light of an early-autumn evening.

“What does who want to be?” asked Sat, from her place on the side of the pool, pressed thigh to thigh with Kayden and sharing a joint with him. He was shirtless, with knee-length cargo shorts rolled up to mid-thigh – whether through laziness, or because he genuinely didn’t own swimwear, was anyone’s guess – and she was in a high-cut black bikini, a scrap of a thing that left little to the imagination.

None of the others had been able to stop staring at her since she undressed.

Raina came to a stop at the edge of the pool by Sat’s legs, clinging to the side like a bedraggled limpet and looking up at her friend. “I don’t know,” she said. “Anyone! Any of you. Hmm… Kayden! What do you wanna be?”

Kayden made a thoughtful noise around the joint pressed to his lips, pulling it away to blow a thin stream of smoke up towards the sky. “I dunno,” he said, words already a little weed-slow, wrinkling his nose. “Dead?”

He laughed – and then stopped, abruptly, when Sat elbowed him hard enough in the side to nearly make him drop the smouldering joint into the pool below. “ _Not funny_ , Kayden,” she snapped, though Raina was giggling a little beside her. “Not _fucking_ funny.”

“Fine, fine.” He rolled his eyes, passed the joint over at her beckoning, and rubbing at his ribs as though more pressure would somehow stop it bruising. “High-school dropout, I guess. _What_?” he asked, when Sat scowled at him through the cloud of smoke between. “Look, I come from a long and prestigious line of alcoholic, trailer-trash addicts who couldn’t even get their fucking GED. It’d be a shame to break _tradition_.”

“What about marijuana farmer?” called Tanner from half-way across the pool, where he was swimming steady but determined laps. There was, surprisingly, only the slightest hint of mockery to his words.

Kayden grinned, and laughed along with the others, nodding in agreement and ignoring Tanner’s faintly smug smile “Now _that’s_ a career I could get behind,” he agreed, and then sighed at Sat’s crossed-arms scowl beside him.

“ _Fine_ , Miss High-and-Mighty,” he said, plucking the joint from her fingers again, and pushing her easily into the pool with a hand between the shoulders. “What to _you_ wanna do, then?”

Sat squealed as she hit the water, flailing desperately in an attempt to avoid going under, and failing dismally. When she resurfaced, it was to squirt a mouthful of water at Kayden, makeup streaming darkly down her cheeks, and with Tanner trying to haul her up out of the water as though he was afraid of her drowning. “ _Asshole_ ,” she informed him, scrubbing at the running mascara and batting away Tanner’s ‘helpful’ hands.

“Guilty as charged,” agreed Kayden, smirking, lips curling to blow smoke up towards his now sopping wet and pancake-flat mohawk. “Question stands, though. What do _you_ wanna be?”

“Porn star,” she snapped back at him without missing a beat, hauling herself out of the pool to find a towel and clean off her face. She missed the way both Darby and Tanner turn pink and flushed in the low, late-evening light, but Kayden’s gleeful cackle was unmistakeable.

Raina sighed, kicking off from the edge of the pool and setting herself drifting on her back, eyes to the moon. “Oh, come _on_ ,” she said, a little sulkily. “It was a genuine question! I wanted real answers, guys.”

Clearing her throat slightly, Darby tore her eyes away from Satine’s hourglass figure in the low light, and nodded. “Yeah, real answers,” she agreed, trailing her tongue across her lower lip in an almost unconscious motion. “We never talk about… college, or work, but Raina’s right. We’re going to be graduating in a year, we need to think about this seriously. About how it’s going to affect all of us.”

Kayden waggled his eyebrows at her, smirking, and she studiously ignored him.

“Fine, _fine_ ,” said Sat, returning to the pool edge and settling a safe distance away from Kayden – though not before judiciously poking him in the side with her toes, hard enough to make him jump. “Um. Actress, I guess? Like, a movie star or something.” She looked almost self-conscious, her eyes softer and more open without their usual thick, dark lining. “I dunno. I can’t see myself going to college, and like _hell_ am I gonna work some shitty minimum wage job for the rest of my life, so…”

“Oh, that’s so cool, Sat?” Raina gushed enthusiastically, grinning as she flipped herself upright to tread water. “I can totally see you as an actress, you’re so- so _glamorous_ , and you’re gorgeous, and confident, and-”

“Yeah,” Tanner said, as he stopped his lengths to tread water next to Raina. “You’ll be a great actress, Sat.”

Though it was hard to make out in the low light and with her slightly darker skin, they all saw the way Sat blushed. “Really?” she asked, oddly vulnerable for a moment before her usual wickedly confident smile slid into place. “That’s really sweet of you, Raina, Tanner. …I mean, of course, I’m _incredible_ , but it’s nice to know you guys think so too.”

“Of course you’re incredible,” agreed Tanner, softly, an odd sort of smile on his face as he stared at Sat – and did his best to ignore the _barf_ motions Kayden was making mere feet from her, entirely unsubtly.

Raina ignored all three of them, though whether deliberately or through cheerful obliviousness was anyone’s guess. “So, Darby!” she said, turning in the water to face where Darby was sat on the pool steps – water halfway up her chest in a poor attempt to hide the rather old-fashioned and unflattering swimming costume she was wearing, and a rapidly-emptying wine bottle in her hand. “Last but not least. What do _you_ wanna do?”

“Hey!” objected Tanner, waving a hand in front of Raina’s face unexpectedly enough to make her shriek in surprise and recoil. Darby, across the pool, snorted in amusement. “Hello? What do you mean _last but not least_? What about me?”

“ _Everyone_ knows what you want to be, Tanner,” drawled Kayden, splashing at the water with his feet and tossing the burnt-out roach of the joint behind him. “Let the lady take her turn.”

“Oh yeah?” Tanner snapped back, taking the bait with his usual ease and speed. “What _do_ I wanna be, then?”

The other four look at one another, and then back at Tanner. “Professional photographer,” they all said, in unison – and Sat took advantage of the brief moment of unity to shove Kayden into the pool.

“Ha, ha, _ha_ ,” droned Tanner, over Kayden’s howls of indignation, though he _did_ take the opportunity to splash water at the flailing form of his friend. “Very funny. No, I _don’t_ want to be a professional photographer. I want to be an accountant.”

“You _assholes_ ,” hissed Kayden, clinging to the edge of the pool and glaring at them all through narrowed eyes, looking for all the world like a pissy cat who’d just taken an unexpected bath. “You _know_ I can’t swim, fuck all of you.”

He was summarily ignored by absolutely everyone on the basis that – swimming skills or no – he didn’t appear to be drowning. Or, at least, didn’t appear to be _imminently_ drowning. A little bit of water and humiliation in front of friends never hurt anyone, after all, though Kayden was doing a good job of _sounding_ like he’d been mortally wounded.

Raina frowned at her friend next to her, though, lower lip sticking out. “Aww, Tanner,” she said, a little sadly, putting her feet down and standing on tiptoes on the pool bottom to rest a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “ _You_ don’t want to be an accountant, your _dad_ wants you to be an accountant. That’s not the same thing.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tanner, biting sarcasm laced through his voice as he swept his overlong hair back from where it was plastered to his forehead. “I’m pretty keen on not being disowned and disinherited, so. Y’know.” He shrugged. “Besides, you guys know what my family thinks about photography. Pretty sure most other people feel the same way. I’m not gonna find much business if I’m _that one weird kid with the camera_ , am I?”

“Yeah, well, your dad’s a fucking prick,” growled Kayden, hauling himself dripping out of the pool and slumping on the tiled edge, breathing heavily and glowering in the general direction of Sat. She stuck her tongue out at him in return, grinning. “So he can go fuck himself, frankly.”

Raina gasped. “ _Kayden_!” she said, eyes wide and bright with shock. “You can’t just-”

“Oh, I absolutely _can_ ‘just’.” He pushed himself up into sitting position, crossing his legs underneath him rather than sticking them back in the water. “The guy called me a fucking _faggot_ last time I saw him. Right to my fucking _face_. He deserves that, and worse, the shit-mouthed bastard.”

Tanner, though he hadn’t responded to the insults, frowned. “Well, I mean. It’s not like he’s wrong? You _are_ …” he started, quietly, trailing off only when Darby kicked water at him from across the pool and made frantic _don’t_ gestures with a hand across her throat.

“Oh, _fuck you_ , asshole,” snarled Kayden, flipping him the bird with one hand and combing fingers shaking faintly with anger through his ‘hawk with the other. The heavily hair-sprayed hair had gotten tangled with the water, sticking out in all directions against his scalp. “Jesus _shit_ , you’re gonna try and defend that crap? Five fucking years we’ve been friends, and you _still_ have no fucking- _god_. Fucking _hell_.”

“It’s… that’s not the point, Tanner,” said Raina to him, quietly, as Kayden’s cursing slowly tapered off into unintelligible mumbling. “That’s a shitty word, and your dad knows it. I’m not saying Kayden should have called him- all that stuff, but…”

“Oh,” said Tanner, quietly. “Yeah. Right. Uh… I didn’t mean it like that, Kayden. Just that you… uh. Forget it. Sorry.” He got only a grunt, and Kayden’s middle finger again, in response.

An awkward silence settled over the five of them, broken only by the soft splashes as Tanner went back to his laps – his strokes a little more aggressive than before – and the paper-crinkle of Kayden rolling another joint.

“…I want to be a teacher,” said Darby, finally, when the quiet started to feel like a physical _itch_ and it became clear no one else was going to speak first. “When I leave high school, I mean. Or, when I leave college, I guess, since you’d need to study for that sort of thing.” She smiled at Raina as the other girl doggy-paddled over to her, shifting sideways where she was sat half-immersed on the pool steps to make room for her friend. “I’m not sure, really, but I guess college is plenty of time to decide, right?”

Raina settled next to her, leaning her head on Darby’s shoulder. “But you hate kids, though!” she said. “Or, well, not _hate_ , I guess, but you always talk about how annoying the elementary and middle-school kids are…”

“Oh, _god_ no, I don’t want to teach _kids_.” Darby shuddered, and took another sip from the wine bottle, staining her tongue and lips an even deeper purple-red. “No, I mean I want to teach college students. Be a lecturer, I guess? I’m not sure what I’d want to lecture _in_ , but maybe geography, or geology…”

She trailed off, tracing patterns in the water with her free hand and tapping fingers against the wine bottle in the other.

“I can totally see you doing that,” said Raina, thoughtfully, shifting to rest her chin on Darby’s shoulder and peer at her friend’s profile in the late evening darkness. “You could do pretty much anything you set your mind to, though. You’re so _stubborn_ when it comes to stuff like that. You’ll do _great_ , teacher or not.”

Darby merely shrugged, and smiled a little shyly – but as close to Darby’s cheeks as she was, Raina could see the pleased blush that coloured them at the compliment.

Slipping back into the pool, Sat swan away from the awkward tension still bubbling between the boys to join the other girls on the steps, and to steal the wine from Darby. The effort was slightly ruined by the fact that Tanner immediately swam after her to settle on the steps too, but she ignored him in favour of taking a large gulp of wine.

“And what do _you_ want to do, Raina?” she asked, once she’d swallowed the cheap alcohol, pulling a face at the vinegar-sharp taste of it. “C’mon, we’ve all aired our dreams for your amusement. _Spill_.”

Raina actually _blushed_ , plucking the wine bottle from Sat’s unresisting hand and taking a long gulp. “I, uh… I’ve actually already applied to some art schools,” she said, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand and playing nervously with her hair. “My mom and dad encouraged me to, over the summer, and I thought- well, the worst that can happen is they turn me down, right?”

“Fuck _off_ ,” called Kayden from across the pool, in a friendly sort of way. He sounded almost impressed. “Really?”

“Yeah!” said Raina, enthusiastically. “All you gotta do is write a letter, and have a portfolio to send them – I photocopied a bunch of my artwork at the library – and pay the application fee…” She shrugged, looking down at her lap, apparently embarrassed. “I mean, it wasn’t like, super hard or anything? I already had the art, and…”

Sat hummed thoughtfully. “Well, look at you, little Miss Organised!” she teased gently. “You’re gonna have a college offer before any of us even have a plan.” She smiled, and nudged Raina with her shoulder companionably, before squinting through the growing darkness at where Kayden was still sat on the other side of the pool. “Hey! Kayden! Get over here and help me give Raina shit for how smart and organised she is!”

Across the pool, Kayden blew a cloud of smoke in their general direction and stuck his tongue out. “What part of _can’t fucking swim_ are you guys not getting?” he called back. “Jesus. I don’t even know why I agreed to come to this thing, I fucking _hate_ pools. No way you’re getting me in one.”

“You’ve already _been_ in, asshole,” said Tanner. He sounded exasperated, but he was smiling, a soft, crooked quirk-up of one corner of his lips. “You’re already damp. May as well come and at least _sit_ with us, huh?”

“Only if I can sit on your lap, sweetheart,” Kayden taunted – but he was already padding his way round the edge of the pool to squeeze into the space left between Tanner and Sat, handing off the half-smoked joint to whomever’s fingers were grabbing at it. He leaned back against Sat, the line of his spine pressed into her upper arm, and swung his legs up over Tanner’s lap to prod at Raina’s thighs with his toes.

Tanner sighed, rolling his eyes, but didn’t object, especially when Sat shifted her arm from behind Kayden to drape over his shoulder. “Asshole,” he repeated, but there was no bite to it. Not even when Kayden smirked, and blew a weed-laced kiss directly into his face.

For a long moment, a companionable sort of silence passed over the group, as they sat in the shallows of the slowly-cooling pool and watched the stars come out, one by one. The joint was passed around until it burnt down to a stub, and the quiet was interrupted only by Darby disentangling herself from Raina to go and get another bottle of alcohol, given Raina had finished off the previous one.

“We’re… we’re gonna stay friends, though, right, guys?” asked Raina, eventually, as Darby settled back in at her side with a bottle of Jack Daniels, no doubt stolen from some unfortunate off-license by Kayden’s wandering fingers. “After this year. I mean… if we all go off and do different things, we’ll still stay in touch?”

“Of _course_ ,” said Darby, immediately, fierce and more than a little wine-drunk. She grabbed at Raina, as though concerned the other girl was planning on leaving there and then, and dragged her close in a wonky, one-armed hug.

Nodding, Tanner, looked at all of them, a soft sort of smile at the corners of his eyes. “We’ll stay friends,” he said, quietly. “You guys are real important to me, you know that? I’m not gonna let us just drift apart, not if I’ve got a say in it.”

“Aww! Tanner’s gone all sappy,” teased Sat, leaning over to pinch his cheek hard enough to turn it pink. “But yeah, what he said.” She raised an eyebrow at Kayden, where he was slumped against her. “What about you, Kayden?”

Kayden shrugged, making a seesawing motion with one hand, and then grinned as he grabbed for the bottle of whiskey. “Nah, I’m just fucking with you. You lot are the only assholes I’ve found so far that’ll put up with me.” He took a long drink, and handed it back towards Darby’s grasping fingers, stealing the joint back from Raina to replace it. “I’d be dumb to let you just run off. You’re stuck with me for life, now.”

“Oh, joy of _joys_ ,” intoned Tanner, but he was grinning too as he flicked at Kayden’s toes where they were settled on his lap.

Raina grinned, bright and radiant, and hugged Darby right back, even as she beamed at the rest of them. “Well, I’ll drink to that!” she said, stealing the bottle of Jack from Darby just as she had with the wine. “Uh… not, like, to that bit about being stuck with Kayden for life. No offence Kayden. But- to friendship! To sticking together.”

“To friendship,” the others echoed after her, as the Jack was passed around like communion wine.

The liquor burned as it went down, settling warm in their stomachs – and though, theoretically, only a single sip was needed to toast the toast, seal the deal, they were high schoolers. One sip turned to two, to three, until the bottle was empty and they were onto the next. As the night spread dark and star-specked high above them, they huddled together in the shallows of the pool steps, drunk and laughing and confident in the knowledge that nothing – _nothing_ – would ever tear their little group apart.

**Author's Note:**

> so the best time to write 3.5k of fic for a new fandom is when you've just dislocated your shoulder, right? anyways, have some pre-ittd-ep fic about teens being teens, and thinking about the future. i'm a monster, so it's as angsty-with-hindsight as i could possibly make it :))))
> 
> come find me @sparxwrites on tumblr for more of me crying over these glorious disaster kids.


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